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Pakistan's Instability Is Part Of Western Imperialism

12/27/2007

Elaine Meinel Supkis

As the US gets deeper and deeper into the swamps of insurrections across the Muslim world, we must examine this closely for the engine of destruction here is partially made in the USA. Some parts of this is very ancient and has been re-ignited by the flood of wealth pouring into these places coupled with a very high birth rate. Much of the West is seeing declining birth rates with Europe and Japan sliding into negative growth. So the Muslim world is seeing rising dynamics while the West wants to keep the Euro-centric status quo imposed on the world. We must try to understand the forces at work and to figure out how to co-exist with Islam. The spiritual revival of Asia is not done, the Chinese rulers fear this force. If it surges in dynamic China, this could cause all the present systems to change suddenly.

American soldiers raided a neighborhood in the southern Iraqi city of Kut early Thursday morning, killing 11 members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to hardline Shiite cleric Moktada Sadr.

Leaders of the Sadr movement, which has abided by a ceasefire for several weeks, condemned the operation but said that they would not conduct any reprisal attacks.

Eyewitnesses said detonations, thumping helicopters and bursts of automatic weapons-fire echoed through the neighborhood of Al Jameea for at least three hours as United States forces fought Mahdi militiamen. At least four people were injured during the clash.

“The American helicopters shelled our neighborhood for three hours,” said Jameel Mohammed, a 27-year-old construction worker. “Dead bodies were scattered here and there. Houses and cars were set on fire, and people were scared and running all over the place.”

Our religious war rages onwards. Sadr is being forced back into the shadows. The ethnic cleansing the US unleashed upon Iraq is finished and now the new puppet rulers must impose order again. The US imagines this New Ottoman Empire we are creating will be beneficial for us in the long run. We will bribe the rulers to give us the trade advantages we need so badly and in turn, we will be the mercenaries supporting various pashas and sheiks as they suppress their own populations.

Systems like this can run a long time. Of course, this is a great way to bleed an empire to death. This is because it is not capitalist, it is very anti-capitalist. The more energy that has to go into floating a corrupt banana republic dictatorship, the more this corrupts both the capital of the empire and the more expensive it gets over time. Resentments build and when the empire doing this suddenly finds themselves in trouble like the British did in WWII, the provinces erupt into rebellion or they passively allow invaders in to attack their masters. This is why such things weaken the home state running these empires.

Our Founding Fathers worried about this. The reason why they did not want a powerful executive branch was simple: they didn't want the new nation to become a massive empire. This is why the push to the West, the conquest of the Indians and the theft of their lands, was never turned into 'provinces' but rather, states with the right to vote in Washington, DC. In no fashion, are we going to make any of the lands where we have established military power, states that can vote in DC. This is the entire problem: we want to conquer and control the world but we will NOT let anyone control us politically in the fashion we supposedly set up 200 years ago. They can't vote on ANY policies that effect them.

Indeed, as we see with Japan, Europe and Israel, these colonies all have set up things so they can corrupt our politicians to the point, they no longer even bother with the fiction of representing their home states, instead, they work for foreign entities that use the lion's share of our 'defense' budget. We are in hock to all of these place occupied by our troops and we pay for this occupation while gaining little or nothing for it.

The corruption that pervades our democracy is directly tied to our desire to militarily occupy much of the planet in the false belief, this makes us stronger and protects us at home. The Europeans and Japanese both run huge trade surpluses with the US while not paying for our troops and navies that protect them and allows them to focus on trade, not losing money running a huge military overhead.

A number of my readers have suggested that my understanding about the churning mess in the Muslim world is naive. This is due to many Americans trying desperately to talk themselves out of understanding bin Laden and how he has managed to insert himself right where it has the most leverage against the US empire. He isn't out to take over any one country, he is fighting a religious war over who controls both Mecca [Makkar] and Jerusalem.

For the last 150 years, as Europe chopped up the Ottoman Empire and destroyed systematically, all Muslim outposts across the planet from the Mediterranean Sea to the China Sea, as the Ottoman Empire rotted and fall apart at the seams, the need to go in and hammer religious strongholds has been an ongoing operation. Up until the invention of the machine gun, it was difficult for the Western powers to control mobs. Barely armed by armed by conviction, masses of people would storm European colonial outposts and individual firearms were little use. But with the invention, first of the Gatling Gun which was used on American Indians fighting on horseback in the Medieval style on the Great Plains, then the invention of the airplane using a machine gun to straf and then drop bombs on natives, the Europeans finally made some headway in subduing Muslims. To this day, the contemptuous West likes to refer to the 'Arab street' while snorting about how helpless and useless they are as they rage against the rules set up by the West to dominate them and to keep them 'in their place' which is several steps below the West that rules them.

Enter Bin Laden: the West, fighting communism, would tell the rulers who were nearly all puppets of the West, they must fight communists or they would be killed by communist Muslims! So the Saudis and the Shah of Iran and others worked with the colonial empires to suppress any expression of political organizations in the classic 'revolutionary' mode which is very un-religious. Or even, anti-religious. To fight 'communism', the West armed and trained religious fanatics who were willing to die suicide deaths rather than let any communists step into Islamic lands.

As the Russian tried to continue their historic progression into Muslim lands which began long ago, about 500 years ago, they invaded Afghanistan under the banner of human rights and freeing the people from the chains of medieval feudalism, right when the US had to go to China to get help, withdrawing from Indochina. At this same time, Israel greatly expanded their own borders and prepared to settle into a long struggle to see if they could ethnically cleanse Palestine without being accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. The Arabs caught in this death-trap tried to rally other Arabs in defense of the Holy Land but failed. This was due to the death of King Faisal, murdered, yes, assassinated by a nephew. Right on the heels of my parents leaving Saudi Arabia.

We knew the King. Quite well, I may add. My father talked to him about the far future. The King wanted to explore solar energy and the use of alternative fuels because he wanted to restrict the pumping of oil for several reasons. One was, he didn't want to deplete Saudi Arabia's oil all at once. Secondly, he didn't want to support the seizure of Jerusalem. He wanted to see it turned into an international city. He didn't need to push all the Jews out of the lands they were seizing, he was willing to make a deal so long as Jerusalem was kept separate and Muslims would have equal access and right to build and hold property there.

Today, the ferocious racist system set up by European and American Jews will not give building permits to Muslims and this tool is used to prevent Muslims from building anything or expanding. Other laws that look like the sort drawn up by the Nazis or in the Deep South of Jim Crow forbid the sale of property to anyone but the racists running Israel for Jewish benefit, only. This is, of course, a major thorn in the side of the Muslim world and a very destabilizing thorn it is! The present king of Saudi Arabia who I dubbed, 'The Evil Uncle' long ago back in the 1970's, runs Saudi Arabia and bin Laden's ultimate goal is to overthrow this noxious man who I didn't like from day one, I assure everyone, this is for me, rather personal.

The King of Saudi Arabia is not admired at home. Indeed, in private, more than one person has compared him to a dog. Like Tony Blair, who I called a 'poodle' before anyone else did [yes, to a BBC reporter who said, 'Can I use that?']. This King hopes to use the West for his own ends but of course, there are many forces at work here, some religious, some ancient, some modern. The economic firestorm that is right below the horizon will flare up suddenly the minute a match hits the oil. Already, today, the price of oil is shooting up. The news that we are fighting Shia forces in Iraq is not good news in context of what is going on. It means we are being sucked ever deeper into religious conflicts we cannot ever hope to control.

The White House Wednesday said it had expressed concern to Ankara over the possible escalation of Turkey's attacks against Kurdish PKK rebels inside northern Iraq.

"We've also made it clear to the Turkish government that anything that could lead to escalated concerns or civilian casualties; we have concerns about those steps," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The comment came amid new attacks early Wednesday by Turkish bombers on positions inside Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the third round of such strikes in ten days confirmed by Ankara.

Note how the West that uses Gatling guns or nuclear bombs on civilians, is all touchy-feely about Turkey killing anyone. The insurrection that Turkey has been fighting has been ongoing for generations. On top of this, the West has sponsored these battles on the behalf of every sort of insurgent when France and Britain wanted to chop up the Ottoman Empire. Few people want to think about the Ottoman Empire. But the dismemberment of this empire has triggered more than one world war! It is right smack in the center of the dark heart of the agony of Western Imperialism.

Right now, Russia and Europe as well as America are in a showdown over another sector of this former empire: Kosovo. Yes, this is in the news, too! Serbia, backed by Russia, is demanding control of Kosovo. Ethnic cleansing has ravaged Kosovo and this is all part of the strange mix of noxious wines that feeds the churning mess that is sucking in the entire world into yet another world war. The US cannot pretend we are disinterested bystanders in this developing world war. We are the the chief engine of it.

The US unleashed the Kurds when we attacked Iraq with no provocation. There were no WMD anywhere in that blighted land. There was one unexploded bomb: religious warfare. This one keeps on blowing up, every day, day after day. As soon as we think it is done, it blows up some more. It is a very expensive bomb. It has driven our finances right off the cliff. We need Turkey as an ally against Russia. But we can't get Turkey as an ally if we demand they look the other way while Kurds attack them within Turkey's borders. Just like we used to cross over into Mexico, chasing natives who fought our conquest via Gatling Gun, of the American West.

At least four supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif were killed Thursday when unidentified gunmen fired at his party's procession in the outskirts of Islamabad, local press reports said.

Sharif, leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), was due to address election rallies in the eastern Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, some 30 kms south from Islamabad.

A procession was taken out to welcome Sharif when unidentified gunmen opened fire from a house at Karal Chowk on the main Islamabad airport road, the PML-N said.

Around 16 other supporters were also injured in the attack. Seven are listed as critical condition, the PML-N was cited as saying.

According to reports from local media, Sharif blamed supporters of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) for the violence at Karal Chowk of Rawalpindi.

I will note here how Pakistan resembles the Wild Wild West. The structures of 'democracy' can't work in an environment where the outcome of any 'elections' are up to the passions of the people involved. We in the 'West' can't point fingers here. The US, for example, not only has a very fractured electoral system that can't even legally count votes in disputed elections, much less, have any sort of uniformity for voting methods or the arcane rules for jiggering the votes to create 'Presidents'. Lassitude and cynicism abound in the US and a bare majority of the voters can barely be bothered in most elections, to cast ballots.

In Muslim lands, the problem isn't interest in voting, the problem is preventing that interest in expressing itself politically. Namely, voting for someone. Suspensions of elections, coups and other anti-democratic measures are used ruthlessly to prevent expression of political will of the people. This is true in South America and Central America. If there is any chance of anyone getting into office that is not on the US approval list, suddenly elections fail or coups and assassinations are ruthlessly carried out.

Even in recent years as the US parades about the planet, talking about bringing democracy to Muslims, we can't do it at all. When the Palestinians voted for the wrong party, the West used the UN to crush the winners and to this very hour, are enabling Israel in literally starving the Palestinians in a punishing session of ethnic hostility not seen since 1940. This infuriating need to prevent any Muslims from choosing either leaders or a course of action is what is fueling the fires of rebellion. Bin Laden would have zero appeal to anyone if the people of Muslim lands had any say in their own affairs. Instead, we have the tragic propaganda game of calling the most vicious rulers on earth, the despotic King of Saudi Arabia and his ilk, 'moderate' since they love our support of their brutal rule!

Pakistan is not some backward backwater. Like Egypt, it has a lot more sophistication than, say, Afghanistan. Yet it is falling into the same chaos as Afghanistan. The US and Europe, after invading Afghanistan after 9/11, far from rebuilding the place and bringing peace and prosperity, have turned to trying to control everyone's lives there while pretending to be allies and friends. We dare not allow a vote with the simple question, 'Should the foreigners leave?' We can't have a vote in Iraq on the topic of removing our expensive troops! No, we have to go on with this farce because we need to bend the will of the people to our own ends.

Thursday’s newspapers had the president revealing a nexus to destabilise him among Mr Sharif, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan and the deposed chief justice of Pakistan, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Playing host to Lahore-based newspaper editors at his Jaati Umra residence later in the day, Mian Saheb said that this was one intrigue he would happily have indulged in and wouldn’t mind to be a part of any time. But he added that those who say that he has bankrolled the pro-judiciary movement that has been going on in the country since March are actually insulting the participating lawyers.

The meeting was Mian Saheb’s first sitting with the editors in a group in his hometown since his return from exile last month. The idea might have been to let the mediamen have a close look at the change the man has gone through over the last nine years that he has been away from the scene, seven of them spent abroad.

He chose to speak in an even more deliberate manner than was the case in the past, and allowed his intellectual guests the ultimate satisfaction of him humbly seeking their advice. There were moments when one genuinely believed that the man was capable of engaging in light-hearted Lahori conversation of his own, but given the tough realities of the day, he held back his laughter.

In 2000, our own Supreme Court interfered with vote counting and stopped a queer election and then Congress and the courts refused to fix anything at all and we are stuck with the same, lousy, unfair system we had back then. The Democrats hope to manipulate the voting in the future so they kept this crummy, useless, hodgepodge system and note how badly things are going already, this time around.

Like Pakistan, some of our voting potential is eaten up by assassins. We can't point fingers to them in this regard. In Pakistan, the dictator simply got rid of the Supreme Court when he disagreed with the Chief Justice. Then he turns around and plays some silly games about not wearing the uniform he has worn since his CIA-backed coup. The West, alarmed at his declining ability to hold back extremists, has tried to get Bhutto and Sharif to be a counterweight but the unfolding violence which includes gunmen shooting supporters of both parties, shows us that this dream is a deluded nightmare.

In the US, we saw armed goons trying to prevent anyone from showing signs of dissent, for example. If anyone shows up at anything wearing T shirts with anything on them, they get arrested or beaten. The crude behavior here mirrors Pakistan pretty closely. Indeed, the chaos there will be mirrored here. We had, in the last Presidential election, two Skull and Bones Yale frat brothers steadfastly ignoring the real issues of the day with the help of the media. There was no discussion of free trade, the budget and trade imbalances were totally ignored and it ended in yet another near-tie despite the utter lack or perhaps due to the utter lack of choice in the candidates.

This election sees the media refusing to treat all candidates fairly and has lots of subterranean stuff like the media refusing to cover the AIPAC convention, for example. The religious factors in our own elections keep bobbing to the surface and there is tremendous unease right below the surface. This is dealt with by having the media assist in lying about religious matters such as when they pretended Bush was a devout Christian, for example, or Reagan, for that matter.

The danger of all this to the US is quite obvious: if we must prevent Muslims from ever electing anyone they want then the same people running things here will do the same to us. Just like we buy off the dictator of Egypt to keep his people under police control, often quite brutally, so do the Chinese hope to keep us under the thumb of whoever they pay to control us. We imagine we will be always the guys with the money and thus, the control. But we are going bankrupt. And we delude ourselves if we imagine this is a one-way street and we are walking in the right direction.

Pakistan credit-default swaps, which rise as concern over credit quality increases, soared to 505 basis points today from 405 basis points on Dec. 21, according to Phoenix Partners Group in New York.

Some readers here claim that the brutal assassination of Bhutto isn't important. If Pakistan goes bankrupt, this is important. The US spends most of its money in two places: directly to Israel or some lesser sums to neighbors of Israel to keep them quiet and to prevent democracy from arising via revolution or other means. We then spend a lot of money holding down Iraq and Afghanistan but 90% of this goes into the pockets of profiteers in the West who are stealing from the public purse with both hands, stuffing their own pockets.

The US can spend more money on Pakistan, of course, but this has to come from somewhere. Bush just signed a $555 billion aid package for warlords in the US and elsewhere. We must sell at least $300 billion in bonds to pay for this and so why not add on another $10 to $100 billion and ask the Chinese to foot the bill? Then Pakistan won't go bankrupt. We will.

Either way, we will be hammered at home by all this. For this reason alone, the average American should be up in arms about our entire program for the Muslim world. If we truly want WWIII, we can have that, too. But I don't recommend this at all for obvious reasons.

Our policies cause high oil prices. The more we try to suppress Muslims, the more we pay out of our pockets at the pump. This game can go on forever or until we go bankrupt. Why we want to continue this way baffles me. We gain nothing at all by any of this. I suppose people can't see the connection. At dinner parties, when people complain about gas, I merrily tell them to impeach Bush and stop harassing Muslims at home and they practically clap their hands over their ears. The inability to understand how we are punishing ourselves is a classic case of blind imperialism. We think, all we need to do is take a Gatling gun and kill the natives.

In fact officials from her Pakistan People's Party were less than complimentary about the security arrangements that had been put in place by General Pervez Musharraf, the country's current military dictator, whom they suspected of not being overly vigilant in preventing the attacks because he was less than enthusiastic about entering into a power-sharing arrangement with Miss Bhutto.

But it was not just Miss Bhutto's commitment to democracy that attracted strong support from her Western backers, which more recently included the Foreign Office and the White House. Miss Bhutto, whose commitment to Pakistan's Islamic legacy was as strong as her support for the democratic process, was seen as a reconciler, the one mainstream political figure who could transcend the awkwardness inherent in an Islamic state forging a close strategic alliance with the West following the September 11 attacks.

Writing shortly before she left London for Pakistan, Miss Bhutto declared her commitment to "the reconciliation of the values of Islam and the West and prescription for a moderate, modern Islam that marginalises extremists, returns the military from politics to their barracks, treats all citizens and especially women equally and selects its leaders by free and fair elections."

Her tract was so on message that it could have been written by any one of the seemingly endless procession of Foreign Office diplomats who visited her Edgware Road headquarters in the months that preceded her departure for Islamabad.

The radicalization of Islam was a slow process. Only after repeated betrayals where they figured out, the real scheme was to marginalize them or worse, destroy their entire cultures and customs while at the same time PREVENTING ANY REAL REVOLUTIONS, given no choice at all except to be powerless and helpless, once the West slammed the door shut on radical leftist activities, the people instinctually turned to their conservative leaders. Who then stood up to the invaders! Bhutto wants modernism without worker's collectives or unionization and other disorders that happen when people at the bottom struggle against the ruling elites. Iran was an ideal place for such action but the leftists elected to office were...killed. With the full approval of the US who wanted no Maos or Ho Chi Minhs running around, organizing workers and peasants!

Dilettantes like Bhutto want to lead but not organize. Her party is more akin to fascists or rather, Vichy-type of politics rather than patriotic appeals to resist invaders or foreign powers. Unlike Mao or Ho Chi Minh, she didn't go off to a cave in the hills and fight. And this is exactly what went wrong here. She didn't bring salvation, she just wanted Pakistan to zoom into the 21st century without any internal struggles. Indeed, in the US itself, we want to ignore the cries of the religious right while zooming into the future where we all have McMansions and inground pools and good jobs that aren't unionized.

The craving for modernity stops at the doors of the workers. This sort of faux liberalism has plagued politics for centuries. The men who wrote some of the finest words about liberty, justice and the rights of man were slave owners. The Christian movement in ancient Rome was brutally suppressed for several centuries because it was an anti-slavery movement at its core. Only when slaves were turned into serfs and the working class turned also into serfs, did the emperors embrace Jesus. The people embracing revolutionary Islam are the same class of people who embraced Christianity back when the Roman Empire was collapsing due to bankruptcy.

The failure of Christianity, the failure to protect the working class, was an opening for the Islamic revolution which swept most of the places hit by the revolutionaries as they used both the book and the sword to spread their new ideology. When the Mongols attacked both Christians and Muslims like a whirlwind in 1250 AD, there was an equal chance of them being converted to either Christians or Muslims. In the Middle East, they settled on Islam because they liked the parts about fighting for Islam. The more passive Christian message was not so appealing.

Unlike Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's other mainstream political figure, who has openly campaigned against Islamabad's close alliance with the West, Miss Bhutto was seen as a politician who could facilitate the country's return to democracy while remaining a staunch supporter of the West.

The dramatic death of Benazir Bhutto brings both those long-term goals into question. In the current political climate it now seems highly unlikely that the country can proceed with the elections scheduled for next month. And if, as seems likely, Islamic extremists were responsible for Miss Bhutto's murder, then Islamic hardliners will have successfully demonstrated that they pose as much threat to the future stability of Pakistan as they do to the West.

The only reason they can 'destabilize' both Pakistan and the 'West' is because they have organized themselves into a force of resistance. This means, the harder we push them, the harder they push back. In Iraq, we try to co-opt everyone so they stop pushing us around. Then we hope to demoralize them and get them to forget we are there sort of like how we did it in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia before we got blown up, big time. This time around, we built the world's biggest, nastiest fortress in Baghdad. In this, we will lurk while the rulers of Iraq obey our orders and we get our oil.

In Pakistan, we have a huge embassy, too. Out in the desert, surrounded by military. We shoot and kill anyone who dares approach. In turn, we hope to subdue the tribes who are resisting us only the cities are resisting us, too. The death of Bhutto complicates this because we wanted her to charm them so we can continue lurking in the heart of Pakistan and ruling it secretly from behind the curtains and we hope no one will notice us. Russia and China are probably amused by all this. They move in with either total force or they stay out. Only the US or England try this half-way method.

The worry that Islamic radicals will destabilize Pakistan is also rather queer. Pakistan's creation was destabilizing in the first place. When the West encouraged rebellion and insurrections and splitting off from the Soviet empire, this destabilized all the 'stan' nations between Pakistan and Russia. Our goal has been, for years, to DESTABILIZE this part of the world. This is why it is called 'The Great Game.' We are not a force for reconciliation and democracy, we are chopping this place up as fast as possible and then putting as many troops in there as possible. And this further destabilizes the area as well as international relations across the entire planet and is directly responsible for Russia going to China and forming an alliance that wants to destroy US power in Asia and Central Asia as well as the entire world.

Our attempt at controlling that part of the world by destabilizing it and establishing military control over some of the most potentially militant people on earth...against their wishes!...is pure insanity. It gained us dire enemies, not control. It created alliances against us that we should have never allowed to form. Our actions in this case has made our situation more precarious, more dangerous. And if all this comes back to the US to haunt us, we should not be surprised. When Bush told the CIA they could do assassinations again, I was not surprised but very disgusted. This is one area where 'blow back' is very literal.

On top of this, watching the West denounce assassinations while PRACTICING IT THEMSELVES, is about as disgusting as this can get.

Barrister-At-Law Aitzaz Ahsan - an eminent Advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP); former federal Minister for Law, Justice, Interior, Narcotics Control and Education; ex-MNA; former Senator; ex-MPA; former Punjab Minister for Information, Planning, Development, Culture and Tourism; and human rights activist - was illegally kidnapped, unlawfully arrested, illegally tortured and unlawfully detained in a dungeon jail of Pakistan in November 2007 by the tyrannical and mercenary Army-Police of General Musharraf, a corrupt, terrorist, tyrant of the Pakistani Army.

Yes, we assassinate Muslims as well as kidnapping them and torturing them. From day one, after 9/11, I was shocked and very upset by all this. We flew into Afghanistan and kidnapped a host of people who we still torture at our anti-constitutional concentration camp in Cuba, a country we are boycotting because we want to replace the government there. A land led by a leader we tried to assassinate in the past.

Congress will pass 'feel good' declarations while funding despots who do these things. I would suggest they cut the budget for the CIA and the Pentagon instead. This will go a long ways towards helping these lawyers in Pakistan.

Muttahida Majlis-e-
Amal (MMA) President Qazi Hussain Ahmed on Sunday demanded that [pro- MQM Terrorist] Pervez Musharraf be tried for the killing of "thousands of innocent women and children" in the Lal Masjid [Red Mosque] operation. "Only [Criminal] Musharraf can be blamed for the killings.

He ordered the massacre to please his Western masters. Hence, he must be tried and handed down the severest punishment [hanged to death] under the law," Qazi told reporters during a visit to Al-Khidmat Foundation Information Center, a non-government organization established to guide parents of Lal Masjid students who went missing in the [unconstitutional and illegal military] operation. MMA Plans to File Murder Case Against Terrorist Musharraf: Baloch

99% of America is totally unaware about this massacre. If we became aware, we would applaud it. This massacre was done at the behest of the US government. Musharraf has been making all sorts of cosmetic or violent moves designed to please the US and each of these weakens him at home. It is bad enough that our own government ignores us, note the rage in Pakistan as its government ignores its people. Should we be shocked? The US Air Force Academy in Colorado has been taken over by the Christian Taliban Jihadists who are running the place like it is the Red Mosque. These guys are far more dangerous than bin Laden or anyone in the Middle East. They can start WWIII very easily, very easily.

Kamaruddin said such a brutal attack would only strengthen the image that Musharraf's government was "being used by enemies of Islam".

"Therefore it is incumbent upon the Pakistani government to dislodge itself from the American pressure and influence in order to restore confidence in the Muslim world that Pakistan is one of the Muslim countries committed towards the Muslim cause," he said.

Met later after the memorandum hand over, Kamaruddin expressed disappointment that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, as a leader of a country that chaired the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), was not seen as being firm to ensure that Muslims image was not undermine by the incident.

Mohd Hatta meanwhile expressed disappointment that the High Commissioner himself was not available to receive the memorandum personally on such an important matter. –Saadon Aksah/ES

Back when Musharraf had his troops storm the temple, I was aghast. This was worse than the Branch Dravidians in Texas. And like that event, has repercussions. Ordinary Pakistanis would dearly love to have a peaceful society but this will not happen unless true liberalism is introduced and this means, unleashing the power to organize within the workingclasses who are presently leaderless and have few options. Indeed, here in the heart of the world's biggest empire, we are slowly losing liberalism, losing ground, we are not gaining power but losing power both imperial as well as domestic power. This is probably why there is a resurgence in fabulous, childish beliefs. Note that Huckabee, a man who has no ability to understand modern liberal societies or simple scientific facts, is now at the top of the GOP race. Because of these horrible traits! There are plenty of Americans who are incapable of living in the modern world or understanding what is happening to them.

Indeed, Huckabee is, unlike the Bushes and Reagan, a REAL 'End of Times' person who wants WWIII to consume all Jews and Muslims as well as Hindus or communist Chinese, everyone who isn't in love with his madcap god, Jesus. When Bush Jr hung out with Osama's older brother, the one who died in a Bush-owned aircraft, how often did he hear Bush joke about manipulating the Christians in America? During this time, at the beginning of the Reagan administration, Osama was learning about the world and he socialized with the most cynical family on earth, the Bush clan. Did Bush joke with the elder brother about the black magic the Bushes practice? This is why I am certain that acts inspired by bin Laden always happen on magic number days. This is due to his correct reading of his foes: they believe in all this and practice this, themselves. So he merely amplifies this tendency, pushing it further forwards. All of his actions have 'expanded' our reach but each one of these expansions have actually destroyed our future prospects. What looks like a golden opportunity to Bush and his ilk are actually a series of traps set up to suck us into conflicts we can't win, by definition, all of which are hideously expensive and detrimental to our own home base here in North America.

Bin Laden isn't a wild man in a cave, he is an internationalist who grew up jet setting with the top jet setters on earth. He isn't an outsider, he is an insider, with a vengeance. The image of him being a warrior is his costume but he really is a thinker, not a fighter. He is physically a weakling but mentally, a giant. He figured out some time ago, around when Faisal was assassinated, any Islamic leader that rises up will be destroyed and replaced with fat, nasty, corrupt gamesters seeking personal gain at the expense of the people living under their rule. This is why Bin Laden is a true revolutionary. The leaders in the US Christian movement have all been corrupted by power and money due to our imperial powers so they are now frantically searching for some leadership which has settled on Huckabee right now. So it is within Islam only the search is deadly. All eyes are focused on the possibility that someone might lead. And whoever this is, will be killed by a host of assassins.

A Turkish parliamentary delegation headed by AKP MP and foreign relations committee chairman Murat Mercan met with a number of senior Iranian officials here in Tehran this week.

The Turkish legislators met on Monday with Alaoddin Buroujerdi, head of Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and Ali Akbar Aghayee, chairman of Turkish-Iranian parliamentary friendship group.

On Wednesday, the delegation met with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Iranian Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel and with former President and head of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

And Turkey is trying to pick its way through this minefield. They are by far, the most liberal of all the Muslim nations. They are very worried about the Islamic rebellions broiling up all over the place. They are determined to build their own military back up and not be a puppet of the West. They tried to join Europe but have been rebuffed. So now they are taking a page from the Chinese book, 'Diplomacy for Dummies' and are working to re-establish working relations with neighbors who surround Iraq. This is why they have this 'Friendship group.' China makes these things all the time, they use them as diplomatic tools for strengthening ties and as listening posts in foreign governments.

Far from being increasingly isolated, Iran is finally building up a secure diplomatic base so they can form alliances with former foes. This is what diplomacy is all about. The winds are definitely shifting in the Muslim world and old conflicts seem to be set to be resolved, one hopes. But this is the great fear of the US empire! We want them to depend on us and hate each other.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed Thursday to put aside a dispute over Israeli construction in a Jerusalem neighborhood and get down to work on a final peace agreement, according to participants in the two sides' first meeting since relaunching peace talks at a U.S.-hosted Mideast summit last month.

The two-hour meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared to break an impasse that has clouded the renewed peacemaking, clearing the way for next month's visit by President Bush.

As Abbas surrenders more and more, 'peace' seems to be at hand. This isn't going to end with the Palestinians packing their bags and vanishing into some concentration camp, never to return. The battle over Jerusalem will not vanish but grow more likely as the Jews successfully steal more and more Palestinian lands. The Muslims perhaps think, they will allow all the Jews to collect there and then the Christians will start WWIII and kill everyone. Who knows? I am disgusted by how hard everyone seems to be working towards this end. In the US, instead of talking about all this, we don't. Even as the GOP gravitates to a man who has every reason to start WWIII, as the entire GOP outside of the Ron Paul contingent, seems bent on WWIII, it would seem to me to be a top topic of conversation, not ignored. The peace talks in Palestine are simply a prelude to the annihilation of the Jews in WWIII as both Christians and Muslims attack them and each other.

This is why the events over there matter and can't be swept under a rug. If nothing else, the Palestinians, once they are all gone from there, will want to see this war happen just to get back at the Jews! So too many people have great motivation to let this happen. This is why I don't want to see the Western colonization of the Holy Lands continue.

Intense rivalries at the jointly-run church can set off vicious feuds.

The basilica, built over the grotto in the West Bank town that is the reputed birthplace of Jesus Christ is shared by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian religious authorities.

The media had all sorts of happy-talk stories about how the brutal suppression of the Muslims in Palestine made Bethlehem safe for Christian tourists. But right below the surface lies this violent beast. I cannot imagine going to Bethlehem to love Jesus while stomping past starving Palestinian children in rags. The contradictions in all this are intense. And part of the mess in Pakistan, is connected to all this.

The expulsion of Michael Semple, an Irishman who is acting head of the EU mission, and Mervin Patterson, a Briton who is the third-ranking UN official in Kabul, has shed light on the murky world they inhabit in the search to bring peace to a trroubled land.

For spies, diplomats and soldiers in Afghanistan are playing the Great Game today as much as their forefathers ever did.

Six years ago some military commanders believed they could beat the Taliban and stamp harmony on Helmand by force – but not any more. Titanium-plated Apache gunships, designed to fight the might and military sophistication of Soviet Russia, can still annihilate ragtag gunmen hired to fight for a few dollars a day. Heat-seeking javelin rockets designed to hit T72 tanks tearing across Europe are very good at finding insurgents cowering in compounds. Marines call it "throwing a Porsche at them", because the missiles cost £65,000 a pop. But there is a profound realisation in Afghanistan that victory will never be achieved by fighting alone. "We are going to have to sit down and do business with people who we don't like, and who don't like us," said one diplomat.

Bin Laden's plan was to bankrupt us by the very simple method of forcing us to use very expensive weapons destroying mud huts, tents and killing sheep. He knew how our corrupt empire does business, he watched this when tagging after his dad who became a billionaire, playing these games with the US in Saudi Arabia! He knew that the US would want to charge all of this to the US taxpayers and the taxpayers would refuse to pay so very penny of this is being charged to our future bills and handed off to our enemies in the Muslim world as well as China and Japan. This weakens America further and the more we do this, the weaker we get. Since I see no sign of this stopping short of bankruptcy, I have to say that bin Laden reads us like a book and his game with us is working much better for him than for us.

Nonetheless, diplomats have been travelling to far- flung corners of the country to meet influential tribal characters for months, if not years. A few days before going to Helmand, Mr Semple was meeting former mujahedin fighters on the Pakistan border. The intelligence that officers glean from the talks lets allied power-brokers decide which warlords to smash and which ones to engage. The recent British-led battle for Musa Qala – the Taliban's last major stronghold in Helmand – began after a leading commander switched sides. Mullah Abdul Salaam, who controls thousands of men in the area, met President Hamid Karzai ahead of the battle – with British help.

In other words, we meet with former foes who direct us to their own foes which we then kill for them and in return, they will do what? HAHAHA. The Great Game is something these guys have played for the last 3,000 years which is why most sane rulers decline trying to run these mountains! Note how betrayals are seen as good things as we rejoice when they stab each other in the back, using us as their knives. This makes everyone there more and more contemptuous of us and also shows them that we are fools, easily manipulated. We also don't hold grudges and they live off of grudges. Note how our battle with Osama has collapsed long ago. They know we are not serious players in their eternal games.

Hindu extremists attacked Christians celebrating Christmas in eastern India, ransacking and burning at least six village churches. One person was killed.

Four hundred and fifty police were deployed to quell the violence in the remote district of Orissa state where the churches – most nothing more than mud and thatch houses – were attacked. The violence had eased by yesterday.

India has been fighting a series of their own religious wars for the last 200 years. The untouchables were civilized people conquered by hordes of chariot-riding fighters several thousand years ago. They have been forced into perpetual semi-slavery and they are ripe for a spiritual awakening. And this is causing great violence with the status quo. The battles between the former Mongol invaders who joined the Islamic revolution nearly 2,000 years ago also broils over here. Pakistan and India aren't fighting openly lately only because of the Pax Nuclear Bombs stand off. But this has caused terrorist attacks to resume. Both sides can't reconcile and the British solution of splitting apart all of this when the empire collapsed didn't work, either.

Indeed, the split up of the Indian subcontinent coupled with the destruction of the Ottoman empire from the outside, not the inside, is at the heart of today's tensions. And will stay this way for the foreseeable future.

Comments

Years ago in order to keep the Russians from over taking Afghanistan the US CIA covertly backed the mujahideen in their struggle. The long engagement took a huge toll on the USSR and cost them dearly. The financial strain was part of their downfall. The US didn't want them too close to the oil assets of the middle east. We will not be able to do any better in that region even with our tech than the Russians did.
Although there are plenty of prozionist in this country the reason Sadam was a threat had more to do with oil than religion. He was selling oil for Euros and the US must maintain the US petrodollar as the world reserve currency or our economic empire will be history. That, not WMD were the threat. Notice as soon as Iran and Venezuela started talking about sales in other currencies how they became a problem for the US. If the dollar is dropped as the reserve currency we will not be able to pass the cost of our global military and deficit spending cost on to those who receive our devaluing dollar. The way we operate it doesn't really matter if a country is run as a democracy or by a despot as long as they are pro US business interest. Unfortunately this has caused a lot of bitterness by many in the middle east and elsewhere. The sooner we get off of middle east oil dependancy the better off we would have been but it will not happen in time to avoid what's in store.

Greg:
Just a followup, there have already been two reports in the internet media of that solution being bandied about. There has been one actual warning to Dr. Paul, delivered by Cheney's mouthpiece on Meet the Press last Sunday. Odious Toad Russert ended his interview with Dr. Paul with a very pointed "be safe out there." Oh well maybe Mrs. Clinton will call for a full international investigation of the murders of the Kennedy brothers, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers et.al. By her standards ( a free press and an uncompromised legal system ) the call would be appropriate.

True except for one thing: we no longer have riots right now but we have in the past!

Assassinations are quite American, by the way. When Kerry was running [strolling] for President, he was in no danger since he wasn't changing anything.

The Kennedys were assassinated because they were making the Black Ops guys uneasy or they were viewed by various assassins as possible changers of history so whacking them would bring about greater changes.

Many of our assassins were lone wolves but they came from a pack of wolves. In the case of the many assassins running around the world today, the inability to stop the empires via open fighting means they use underground methods.

Bin Laden is exploiting this. He has no desire to win a popularity contest. People win these by handing out goodies. And any leader who is in the opposition to the ruling elites of the world gets killed or arrested or ASSASSINATED by the black ops people.

Note that no Muslim leader who is popular with the 'street' is ever allowed to live. The 'street' is very anti-American. So they are kept from any power and influence. Increasing the pressure on the average person in Islamic lands is part of the revolutionary force represented by bin Laden. He wants everyone to be unhappy, not happy.

We could easily win against him by making the 'street' happy and this is laughably easy: stop the dismemberment and diaspora of the Palestinian people! Right after 9/11, Bush even said he would do this and this is why we had support back then!

BETRAYAL BIG TIME. The fury felt over this betrayal is still playing out and it works against us and for bin Laden. The refusal of our media to tie all this together is typical, by the way. Few people read my stuff.

Ron Paul splits the right. He attracts the young techies/educated class who are the spine of the financial manipulator class, from the GOP mainstream which is mostly Christians wanting Santa Claus and gambling.

Note how they have spread gambling all over this nation, eh? HAHAHA.

Anyway, just like Wallace was wrecking Nixon's Southern Strategy, Ron Paul is wrecking the 'Christians/money men' strategy. The fact that Ron is the ONLY GOP candidate talking about money is very significant and quite dangerous to his future health.

I really want to see him in the election just for this reason. NONE of the major candidates are talking about money and Kucinich has been studiously ignored so he has been already marginalized.

Alas, on both the right and left, the desire for a Santa Claus solution is very, very strong and very hard to resist.

Al Qeada isn't a tribe. It is a classic underground organization. These things usually have teams of 3 people each. They have a common goal and philosophy and perhaps, a mysterious, dead or hidden leader.

None operate in direct conjunction with the other. This is how all Resistance organizations operate. The 3 person unit can't be tortured if a member is caught, and betray the movment!

So anyone leading a large group like this tribal leader denying everything, can denounce 'terrorist' attacks and on top of this, have nothing to do with it at all!

But there are other 3 man groups being launched every month, to do these very things. Over and over again. Note that this business of the 3 man unit was created by commmunists and people fighting Nazis in OCCUPIED TERRITORIES.

The US has crushed all opposition that is ORGANIZED but NOT the UNDERGROUND opposition. As Mao noted, 'Revolutionaries swim in the sea of the people.' And the US as well as our puppet rulers mock the people in the 'street' in Islamic lands. We think they are stupid and silly and HELPLESS.

Indeed, one reason why Americans can't think clearly about bin Laden is due to our country working very hard to prevent any revolutions such as the ones run by the communists so successfully in the past.

Bin Laden wanted to do the classic warlord thing and he played this game, without the backing of a tribe, in Afghanistan. But over the years, he learned the lessons of the International movement, the Wobblies, etc. I don't know if he read books or learned the hard way but he did figure out that disparate, non-connected groups could do massive attacks using asymetrical warfare.

The riddles that surround Atta are still not being dealt with. The 9/11 group had virtually no connections with Bin Laden. They trained and met either in Europe or the USA. They did all this right under the nose of Mossad. The very first person killed on Atta's plane was a top Mossad agent sitting right next to the hijackers.

Mossad knew about this conspiracy and was closely associated with it but did not try to stop it any more than Bush tried to stop it.

The hijackers operated at one level above the 3 man level: it was a dual-3 man operation which is why the Israelis knew about it. It had too much 'leakage'. Since then, these groups have shut down even more intercommunications due to all the spying by the great powers and operate very subterraneanly which means there are few ways of tracking or countering them and they are increasingly active due to the very repression which forced them to break apart into the classic 3 man underground resistance teams.

We forget that this is what all wars entail: sabotage. Blowing up trains, planes and buildings as well as assassinations. The Nazis used to murder whole towns after assassinations. The Israelis will hammer all of Palestine when there are 3 man team attacks from the Palestinians.

Note that Israel's Prime Minister was assassinated by a right wing Israeli seeking to change the government there. HE SUCCEEDED. Indeed, these sorts of things are political and often, not ordered by the people who win power this way, but ALLOWED by them.

Pakistan is even bloodier than Israel and America. Their chief way of changing power is via violence. I remember the present dictator took over and immediately, the law office representing the former Prime Minister was invaded by armed thugs who murdered everyone there. This made the BBC but not US news.

Indeed, one reason why Americans can't think clearly about bin Laden is due to our country working very hard to prevent any revolutions such as the ones run by the communists so successfully in the past.

Bin Laden wanted to do the classic warlord thing and he played this game, without the backing of a tribe, in Afghanistan. But over the years, he learned the lessons of the International movement, the Wobblies, etc. I don't know if he read books or learned the hard way but he did figure out that disparate, non-connected groups could do massive attacks using asymetrical warfare.

The riddles that surround Atta are still not being dealt with. The 9/11 group had virtually no connections with Bin Laden. They trained and met either in Europe or the USA. They did all this right under the nose of Mossad. The very first person killed on Atta's plane was a top Mossad agent sitting right next to the hijackers.

Mossad knew about this conspiracy and was closely associated with it but did not try to stop it any more than Bush tried to stop it.

The hijackers operated at one level above the 3 man level: it was a dual-3 man operation which is why the Israelis knew about it. It had too much 'leakage'. Since then, these groups have shut down even more intercommunications due to all the spying by the great powers and operate very subterraneanly which means there are few ways of tracking or countering them and they are increasingly active due to the very repression which forced them to break apart into the classic 3 man underground resistance teams.

We forget that this is what all wars entail: sabotage. Blowing up trains, planes and buildings as well as assassinations. The Nazis used to murder whole towns after assassinations. The Israelis will hammer all of Palestine when there are 3 man team attacks from the Palestinians.

Note that Israel's Prime Minister was assassinated by a right wing Israeli seeking to change the government there. HE SUCCEEDED. Indeed, these sorts of things are political and often, not ordered by the people who win power this way, but ALLOWED by them.

Pakistan is even bloodier than Israel and America. Their chief way of changing power is via violence. I remember the present dictator took over and immediately, the law office representing the former Prime Minister was invaded by armed thugs who murdered everyone there. This made the BBC but not US news.

I wish to slightly disagree with you on a couple of points: I don't think Ms. Bhutto was a 'dilettante'. I think, like you, she was an amazingly accomplished, intelligent, brave and unafraid woman. If she were just a dilettante, she would have spent the rest of her days shopping at Harrods. And I don't think that As'Sadr has been 'driven back into the shadows'. I think he is in the shadows because he's actively buying armaments for when the real fight begins. He has learned from Mao. He will be a force to reckon with, and, if he lives, will control Iraq.
It was recently made aware to me that the CIA, despite the CW, was very active in Afghanistan BEFORE the Russians invaded. In fact, I think the Russians invaded to stop the prospects of cross-border unrest fomented by the CIA/Al Quaida. Thinking about this, it may just be the case that Pakistan is being sacrificed to the so called extremists to initiate just such a destabilization in China, which has a very large and restive Muslim population. Look, Gates was around when the Taliban was created in Afghanistan, and he's still around. Ms. Bhutto, in at least a symbolic sense, stood in the way of such a plan.
Geronimo, like the Palestinians you mentioned, terrorized the whites with just a couple of buddies. Over-reaction is our stock in trade.

Larry dfh, I have the same info regarding our presence in Afghanistan prior to the USSR going in, at least six months before. Brzenski (sp?) was certainly in favor of it. That government was only nominally Marxist, essentially they were nationalists who opposed the two biggest forces in Afghanistan, who were pretty much intertwined - the drug dealers and the fundamentalists. That was probably the only real hope Afghanis had-women were in the workforce and attending schools. Where were the laura bush "we're doing this to help the women" types then ? Or the charlie wilson types - I've got no intention to see it but assume hanks will play him as a good guy, rather than an asshole who piled more misery on those people.

Elaine:
Dr. Paul's support is a lot more than just "young techies". He pulls a lot of unhappy dems ( which is why DailyKos is so rabidly anti-Paul ), independents, old folks ( myself at 60+ and self employed ), etc.
About the lack of riots currently, the economic nasties will be hitting home about the same time as spring planting, watch for some riots then. There are already tent cities springing up, whole neighbourhoods of empty foreclosed or just abandoned mcmansions, think 1929-40 but with free internet access and the ability to flashmob.
( Why else would AipacRepresentative Jane Harmon and the House have pushed through that "Thought Crimes" act last month in such a hurry and in such silence. It went through under a no debate special provision in the house on a day when Dr. Paul was out on the stump because no votes were scheduled that day )
HR 1955 The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 for those who prefer exactitude. This is the turn off internet access for civilians act. It is there in the section 899b findings:
"(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens."

"(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions."

Elaine in case you don't recognize yourself in the above READ IT AGAIN.

Elaine:
Uses the Internet to inveigh against our staunch allies the Japanese in their currently depressed economic state.
Uses the internet to talk about Blowback.
Uses the internet to explain the virtues of Chinese COMMUNIST diplomacy.
In her use of the internet she has weakened the necessary beliefs in the efficacy of the Federal Reserve, the righteousness of the CIA NSA FBI IRS DHS in their never ending attempts to find domestic terrorists.
Shall I go on? The indictment writes itself just by going over a half dozen of your less incindiary posts.
This is the America that Hillary and Rudi, Barrack and McCain, Edwards and Mitt, Fred and Huck want. Brain dead, incapable of even the thought of resistance to any damn bureaucrats momentary mental brain fart that becomes administrative law.

Musharraf initially blamed her death on unnamed Islamic militants, but Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told The Associated Press on Friday that "we have the evidence that al-Qaida and the Taliban were behind the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto."

He said investigators had resolved the "whole mystery" behind the opposition leader's killing and would give details at press conference later Friday

12/13/07 "LA Times" - -- KARACHI -- We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.

I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.

By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.

1. Bin laden doesn't exists. He doesn't have any stratagy against US because he doesn't exists.

2. Pakistan is about to be split. US has noadays a close relation with India and doesn't need Pakistan. A splited Pakistan is part of Great Game: Balkanization of middle east: Divide and Conquer, again.

The idea that a very real person who grew up hobnobbing with, hanging around with and socializing with the leaders of the world today, the idea that he no longer exists or can figure out how to upend the ruling elites....this baffles me a lot.

I was 'erased' by our own government. I am a loudmouth who even camped out in front of the UN, joked with world leaders while doing this, the ruler of China called my dad in the dead of night to complain about me, Bush Sr. screamed at me on the telephone, I was on international TV, I forced some changes in the law as well as international politics

AND I AM INVISIBLE. This is goofy, bizarre and deliberate. On the other hand, like Bin Laden, I can still push things around. Seriously. It just won't make the news.

I hear a lot of speculation about bin Ladin being dead. A lot of the Arab press has reported this, he was diabetic as I understand it. Someone on the run with this disability is at a tremendous disadvantage. Were he to be dead I'm sure the US would never admit to it, he makes too good a boogey man.

Elaine, the things you write reveal all the reasons to believe and understand that bin Laden is dead, as well as why. The thing I wonder is what has clouded your sight regarding this? You have all the information needed to come to the conclusion that he left the scene long ago. What is it that blinds you?

Whether he lives or not matters not to Al Qaeda, they are on their own course, largely insulated (deliberately) from one another. The only people that his existence matters to are the ones who need him as a place to focus fear and hate.

1984. Big Brother and Goldstein. They made him and they perpetuate him.

You know, I seem to recall seeing bin Laden on videotape several times and his mouth and hands were moving (i.e. he did not appear to be a dead parrot).

It seems to me that his strategy is very clear. To borrow a line from Febre of the movie "The Musketeer": Rhetoric does not conquer nations. Chaos conquers nations.

bin Laden's goal is to spread as much chaos as he can throughout the muslim world until the arabs finally just overthrow all their stupid governments and kill all foreign mercenaries. The plan seems clear enough.

First Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Pakistan. After we invade Pakistan and reduce it to ashes, al Quiada will erupt somewhere else and then we will be told that this new barren wasteland is vital to our national security and thus we must invade and "secure" it.

While we are desperately trying to put out the raging fires in Pakistan, al Quiada will quietly pack their bags and move out and start new fires somewhere else, just like arsonists do.

Once chaos has spread throughout the entire region, there will be no more oil for the western world. Not a bad plan, if you ask me.

bin Laden may be dead, but he left behind the blueprints on how to destroy us.